The life of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza

In the archives of Israel’s military courts, there is a six-page document, handwritten in Hebrew, that records an interrogation of Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip. The document, dated February 8, 1999, gives him identification number 955266978.

Sinwar was thirty-six at the time, and had been imprisoned for eleven years. Before being jailed, he had led a Hamas unit called Munazamat al-Jihad wa al-Da’wa, or the Majd—an enforcement squad that punished those who collaborated with Israel or who committed offenses against orthodox Islamic morality, including homosexuality, marital infidelity, and the possession of pornography. Sinwar was serving four life sentences in a facility in the Negev Desert for executing Palestinians accused of working with the enemy. As his interrogator, a sergeant named David Cohen, recorded, he also admitted to another crime: the year before, he had conspired from prison to engineer the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier.

Sinwar’s co-conspirator was a fellow-inmate, the Hamas commander Mohammed Sharatha. The two had become cellmates in 1997, when Sharatha was in the middle of a long sentence; as part of a Hamas security force called Unit 101, he had participated in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers. He wasn’t especially remorseful about the operation (“I did what I did, and I don’t regret it,” he said later), but he was troubled about something. As Sinwar wrote in a confession included in the interrogation file, “I felt that he was sad most of the time.” Sharatha eventually explained the source of his despair: his sister, back in Gaza, was dishonoring the family by having an extramarital affair. Could Sinwar help find a way to have her appropriately punished? Sinwar promised to get word to his brother, Mohammed, a leading member of the Hamas military wing in Gaza. (Hamas prisoners routinely smuggled out messages through visitors.) The interrogation record notes that the deed was soon accomplished by one of Sharatha’s brothers: their sister was found dead in the Strip.

From the start, Sinwar regarded Israeli prison as an “academy,” a place to learn the language, psychology, and history of the enemy. Like many other Palestinians designated as “security prisoners,” he became fluent in Hebrew and consumed Israeli newspapers and radio broadcasts, along with books about Zionist theorists, politicians, and intelligence chiefs. Despite the length of his sentence, he was preparing for his release and the resumption of armed resistance.